


What's Left of Kisses?

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Case Fic, Domestic Violence, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Murder, Reference to non-con, reference to domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:17:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes has fallen into another of his black moods after a dry spell in between cases, and Watson has found himself hoping for just about anything to pull his friend out of his depression. What he gets is a case more brutal and unsettling than he could ever have wished, before the backdrop of the idyllic Norfolk coast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Our Heroes Have A Case At Last

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote from Brecht, which is here in full: “The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”  
> This fic may be triggering for some readers; warnings for everything are in the tags.

Reviewing my case notes from 1881 up to my 'marriage' to Mary Morstan in '89, I find one stands out in my memory more than all the rest. Given the details of the case, this is hardly surprising; it was a terrible affair; although this is not the only reason I have for giving it some preference over the others. No doubt I could make it fit for publication if I wanted, but it would involve altering so much of the original story that I must confess I have no desire to do so. The outcome of the case would in all probability not be palatable to some readers, anyway. Besides all this, I fear that even now, years later and with my dear friend gone forever over a waterfall, it would reveal too much of my feelings for him, no matter how vigorously I edited it.

It was the case that brought us together, after all.

 

***

It was the autumn of 1886 and it began, as many cases did, with a letter.

Holmes had been in a dreadful mood for over a fortnight and his company was growing intolerable. I had begun to find myself hoping for a homicide just to make it possible to continue to live with him. I banished such thoughts as quickly as they came, although in truth had the letter never arrived it would very likely have been Holmes's murder that needed investigating; never have I wanted to leave him, but killing him is another matter entirely. Or, rather, it was.

One should, however, be careful what one wishes for, as the letter which arrived for Holmes that morning in late October promised a murder as foul as any we had ever been presented with. Holmes, of course, was intrigued.

"Is it a case?" I asked him as he opened the letter at the breakfast table. He had previously been picking at a hard boiled egg with little enthusiasm.

He did not reply, instead reading the letter to himself. He did not so much as glance at me. An engrossing case, I decided, and resolved not to feel slighted.

At last he finished, and threw the missive at my chest. "There, Watson," he said, "what do you make of that?"

The letter had fallen into my lap. I laid down my fork, and wiped a hand on my napkin to examine it. The handwriting was small and neat, the paper marked with some, presumably great, family's crest. The letter had clearly been written by someone in a state of severe distress, for there were traces of tear stains all over the page. It was not long. It read:

 

> Dear Mr. Holmes,
> 
> My name is Lady Theresa Montmerency, of Bramshill Manor in Norfolk. I am writing to you out of desperation, as no doubt have many others. You may or may not have read in the _Times_ of my dear husband's death; it was reported as accidental, and so the police have ruled it. However, both my mother-in-law and I believe that it was far worse than that: murder.
> 
> Please, Mr. Holmes, my husband was not a careless man, and he can have had no reason to be so reckless as he was. I have lost all faith in the police force, who are incompetent, and I am growing frantic. You must come to Bramshill, I beg you, and examine everything for yourself.
> 
> I am willing to pay whatever price you ask if you will help me. Holkham is the nearest train station; a wire with your arrival time would be sufficient for me to send a carriage to bring you to the house.
> 
> Yours sincerely, Lady Theresea Montmerency.

I sat back, allowing the letter to fall from my hand onto my lap once more. "It's certainly interesting," I said, thinking of my own dreadful hope for a murder to lighten Holmes's black mood. Stupidly, irrationally, I wondered if this were my own fault. Of course, I never told Holmes of any of this.

Holmes, who was now positively grinning with excitement, said, "A murder covered up as an accident - or, a possible murder possibly covered up, at least. And in Norfolk! You're always telling me how good the country air can be, Watson, for a man's constitution; what say you to a little holiday?"

"I say you're far too excited by another man's death. But I will go with you, of course."

His face was already bright with the thrill of the chase. "Marvellous!"

"Although," I said, as I stood up to go and tell Mrs Hudson of our plan, "I must admit your idea of a holiday is rather a strange one." I handed him the letter again.

He shrugged this off, as a duck will shrug off water. "I've always liked mixing business and pleasure." The look in his eyes as he said this made me wonder, and not for the first time, if he might be flirting with me. If he were, I had never yet found the courage to attempt to flirt myself. Instead I smiled, amiably, and rolled my eyes as a friend would and walked as fast as I could down the seventeen steps to Mrs. Hudson's rooms. I stayed with her as long as I could.

Later, I packed as Holmes found an Irregular to send a telegram down to Norfolk accepting the case, and declaring that we would arrive at half past six that evening. I did not know how long we would be staying, and Holmes could offer no clarification. We had, however, left for cases abroad on shorter notice than this, and so my task was not altogether a difficult one by comparison. The journey would take us well over three hours; we were to leave at lunchtime. The weather was growing colder by the day as the leaves grew browner and the days shorter. I thought I ought to take my warmest clothes. Nevertheless, I found myself distracted, with a suitcase half full, after only ten minutes of packing. I had, of course, read of Lord Montmerency's death as his widow supposed Holmes would; certainly an accidental death was the most obvious conclusion from the facts presented. The report had said that he was walking along the coast late at night when, having misjudged his own position, he fell over the edge of the cliff half a mile from his family seat and drowned. The only strange thing I could find about the case at all was the time he had chosen for his walk; close to twelve o'clock, on a clear and moonless night.

Holmes, who had wandered into my room without bothering to knock, found me in this reverie not long before we were to leave. I must confess he startled me when he walked into my field of view. I expected him to speak, to reprimand me for my lacklustre preparation for the trip. Instead he walked to my wardrobe and began to finish the task for me. I was surprised enough to come entirely out of my daydreaming.

"Holmes?"

"I fear this case might be a little more sinister than we had anticipated," he said, unwilling or unable to look at me, with his eyes instead on my suitcase, "I have just spoken to - an old acquaintance, to ask them about Lord Montmerency. They were familiar with one another. He was - that is to say, it seems he had some slight acquaintance with Lord Montmerency. The assessment he gave of the man's character was not - was not particularly flattering." With that, he threw my case shut and carried it down to the front door himself. I tried to recall the last time I had known him hesitate so over his words.

 

***

We changed trains at Norwich. As it grew dark and we travelled on through the green and dull pastures of England, Holmes sat with his knees drawn up to his chest in our otherwise empty compartment. He had not spoken for over an hour, nor had he ever explained precisely what it was that had unnerved him so in his conversation with his mysterious acquaintance. I had been watching him for some time, knowing that he could not see me. He had his eyes closed, and his forehead resting on his knees. He was like a little child curling up to protect itself from the world. I hardly know, even know, what I wanted to do - to squeeze his shoulder or touch his hand, to protect him myself.

But I found I could do none of those things, so instead I watched him, and the scenery, and the first winks of the stars above, until the train's light fell on the ebb and flow of the black North Sea.


	2. In Which Our Heroes Meet Our Heroines

Despite Holmes's wire announcing the time of our arrival, when we disembarked the station was entirely empty. It had grown dark long since, all our light came from a single gas lamp at the far end of the platform. There was pale, half-formed moon. Winds high up in the atmosphere bore grey thick cloud over the sky, one shade darker and studded with stars. At ground level the air was cold with a stiff breeze blowing in over the sea; there was a storm coming in. Somewhere unseen in the rolling blackness of the surrounding countryside a vixen was screaming.

I have never liked vixens. Or rather, I have never liked the noise they make, for I find the animals themselves bearable. As a child, I would hear them calling from the woodland behind our house and become convinced that they were ghosts. I was always rather glad I could not hear them during my service with the Army; I had enough to worry about there already. But now I heard that womanly shriek echoing across the hill and felt the muscles of my gut twist into knots. It was such a childish fear to have. I almost laughed at myself; here was I, with a Jezail bullet in my shoulder, a man fast approaching thirty who had watched friends die before his eyes, and I was afraid of a little red animal, entirely unaware of my existence, crying more than a mile away.

Thank God Holmes did not notice. Usually I would give the man more credit, but he had his back to me at the time and I was quick to school my features into something more appropriate to the situation. When he turned to me, it was clear he was entirely unaware of my childish fear. Probably the darkness helped me there.

"I wonder where our host can be," he said, producing his cigarette case from his coat pocket. He did not offer me one.

"Perhaps there has been some delay up at the house."

He took a long drag on his cigarette before he answered me, and watched the smoke curl up towards the dark sky. "Perhaps. What do you make of it all so far, Watson?"

"You are the one who says one should not theorise in the absence of all the facts."

He laughed at that. "Very true, dear boy, very true. But you read the newspaper report; what did you make of it?"

I shrugged. "It certainly sounds like misadventure. A man walking alone by a cliff late at night, quite possibly having drunk a fair amount - certainly his death was tragic, but hardly grounds to suspect murder."

"But what evidence is there to suggest alcohol had been consumed? It is perhaps natural to assume so - but have you definite proof of that? I thought not. And if the widow's assessment of the lord is to be believed and he was, indeed, not a reckless man, what would he have been doing on a cliff top so late at night, and when it was so entirely dark? It is rather strange, you must admit."

"You think it a murder, then?"

"I think nothing. As you said, I never theorise without all the available facts. But look now, Watson! It seems our carriage has arrived at last."

A carriage had indeed arrived, driven by a sour man in a shabby ulster coat. His face was marked with smallpox scars and wrinkles, with two dark and heavy brows almost meeting over a crooked nose. There was little hair left on his head; indeed, it seemed to have migrated down his face to those thick eyebrows and the beard he was cultivating across a jaw entirely unsuited to it. Holmes would often accuse me of romanticising such descriptions in my work, but it this case it was entirely unnecessary. He was a cantankerous, taciturn man whose character was writ large across his face.

"You Mr. Holmes?" he asked.

"Indeed I am," my friend replied, "and this is my dear friend and colleague Dr. Watson." He seemed to have recovered his good humour, I could not say how. I forced a smile at the coach driver.

"Moore. The missus told me as I had to pick yous up. I'll take them bags." This he did, managing to appear surly even as he hefted them onto the back of the coach. Every task he performed was done with as much muttering as possible, and so theatrical was his ill-humour that it became almost comical. He would, to cement my opinion of him as a determined self-pitying wretch, later reject the tip of five shillings I offered to him. I never gave him the satisfaction of handing over more in all the time we stayed at Bramshill.

The road to Bramshill was a difficult one, full of ruts and loose stones and holes which made the carriage jump. Holmes and I were flung about rather more than either of us would have liked. Before long, the wound in my leg had begun to complain. By the end of the journey, I had begun to wonder if I would have been better off walking to the house. Although I never voiced any of my complaints to Holmes, I have no doubt he knew; he kept a reassuring hand planted on my knee for the better part of the carriage ride.

We saw little of the country on the way to the house, although the vixen continued to scream somewhere beyond the range of the carriage's solitary light. The house itself was secluded away at the end of an avenue of lime trees nearly half a mile long, where it rose out of the dark country, overshadowed by soft rolling hills. The sea was to the east of the house, half a mile away but the waves breaking at the foot of the cliff were audible. No birds sang, and the vixen had, mercifully, fallen silent. The house itself was large, as I had expected, and looked to be Jacobean in design. As I understood it, the land and title had been conferred to the Montmerencys by James I, and the first lord had built his house here not long afterwards.

These were the facts of the house as we came to understand them: the late lord had been his father's only son, and had himself left a single heir behind, being only thirty-two when he died. There were rumours that there might have been more, but his wife had in the five years of their marriage suffered two miscarriages. She was several years younger than her husband, and had married him hastily after the death of her own father, whose substantial estate was entailed away from his wife and daughter to his nephew, who took over the entirety of his uncle's property immediately. Society gossips and the young wife's few intimate friends suggested that the marriage was not a happy one, but there were few signs given by either party to suggest any strong dissatisfaction. Certainly their son was hale and hearty, and at four years old was doted on by everyone, his father included. The elder Lady Montmerency still lived with her son, rather than in the widow's cottage built three generations before for women such as her, as this house was at the time rented out to tenants who had little interaction with the family. The domestic staff was substantial, and run by the iron will and careful planning of the butler Harrison and housekeeper Mrs. Grey. This made up the entirety of the household. All in all, it was an unremarkable country estate occupied by an unremarkable old family, such as could, and still can, be found all over England.

Of course, we knew none of this when we arrived to the dark and desolate house that cold October night. Conscious no doubt of my wounded knee, Holmes was so good as to help me down from the carriage as though I were a woman, although of course I did not object to the treatment. What Moore made of this I have no idea; certainly he saw it, and the expression on his face when he did was sour, but since this seemed to be his natural state it was hard to determine what the real cause of it was. With another bout of vociferous muttering, Moore handed us our bags, and it was then that he refused my tip. By then the door had been opened by some unseen hand, and the younger Lady Montmerency stood in the underlit hall to greet her guests.

It was rare that people mistook me for my dear friend, and Lady Montmerency was no exception. Of the two of us - one six foot tall, with thick dark hair and, though not really handsome, possessing a striking appearance and some strangely attractive, almost hypnotic quality; the other short and stocky, stubbornly, perhaps pathetically, maintaining his military bearing despite the scars of two war wounds and the ravages of enteric fever - it was obvious which of us was Holmes.

"Mr. Holmes," she said, and the relief on her face was obvious, "how good of you to come." Even in the poor light of the hall, she was stunning. Holmes often criticised me for my weakness when confronted with the fairer sex, but I have never seen it as a bad thing. I have in my life been attracted to men and women in almost equal measure, and never thought a healthy appreciation for the human body to be a fault. This did not, however, stop me earning an appalling nickname during my army days.

The lady stood with the gaslight behind her, forming something akin to a halo around her head. Her hair was the stuff of Pre-Raphaelite dreams, thick and fiery red. Though she was pale and had not, if the purple bruises under her eyes were enough to go on, been sleeping well, her eyes were green and bright, and her carriage almost regal. The jet black of her mourning clothes made a wonderful contrast with her fair skin. I stood, rather stunned, on the front step.

"My lady," Holmes was a deal more collected than I, and bowed to her as a gentleman should.

"And this must be Dr. Watson. A pleasure to meet you both, even under such circumstances." She smiled at me and, at last, I was able to be courteous.

"Indeed, my lady. I am so sorry for your loss."

Her beautiful face clouded over at that. She was quick to usher us into the house and shut the door on the cold night.

"There's a dinner ready in the hall. Don't worry about dressing for it tonight, but usually just black tie will do. I hope you don't mind having to stay here as well as conduct your investigation - I would suggest you stay in the village, but there isn't anywhere, really. Even the inn's only got the one room. Bramshill's not particularly important, you see. Not even big enough for a train station. That's why you had to come all the way from Holkham. Mind you, they only built that about fifteen years ago as I understand it. I am sorry, I'm babbling. My husband was always telling me off for talking too much. Moore will take your bags upstairs. Get one of the footmen to help you, Moore, if you need it. The dining room's just in here." She led us through a door on the lefthand side of the hall before the enormous main staircase which seemed almost to grow out of the floor. The dining room was similarly specatcular, panelled in dark wood with a table capable of seating twenty-three people in its centre. Tonight it was set for just four; the two Lady Montmerencys, Holmes, and myself.

The elder Lady Montmerency was already seated when we came in, and merely nodded to us in greeting. She could not have been more than sixty, but her son's death had aged her horribly. She was now a pale white thing, resembling a ghost more than a flesh-and-blood woman. The necessary introductions were made, and we sat down to a dinner of soup and cold meats. It was simple, but filling and delicious. I resolved to find and compliment the chef at my first opportunity. Dinner was eaten largely in silence, with Holmes and I both tired by our journey and the ladies disinclined towards conversation in their present state of mind. No doubt Holmes observed a great deal during the course of the meal, but I understood little more than that we were to share a house with an exceptionally beautiful widow and her ageing, distraught mother-in-law, that the food was excellent, that the servants were disciplined if not always pleasant, and that the house itself had probably seen the like of its master's death before, and that that was perhaps why I felt a chilling lack of concern radiating from it.

After dinner, Holmes and I retired to the rooms kindly provided for us by our hostess to unpack. They were adjacent to one another, though not actually conjoined. Both were comfortable, with high ceilings, and warm fires lit in their grates.

Not bothering yet to order his things, Holmes proceeded to make a nuisance of himself by occupying both my room and my attention. He had, as I suspected, formed a number of theories about the house and its inhabitants already, in none of which I was particularly interested. However, he had noticed one thing which I had missed.

"The bruises on Lady Theresa's wrist - "

"There were bruises?" I spun around from the wardrobe to face him. He rolled his eyes at me.

" _Yes_ , you really are frightfully unobservant sometimes."

"You can hardly blame me for missing bruises on the wrist of a lady wearing long sleeves and black lace gloves, Holmes."

"Well you spent enough time staring at her, I thought you might have noticed."

This was a criticism, and delivered more harshly than I had expected it would be. There was acid in Holmes's voice as he said it. I stood, stunned, and spluttering.

"Oh really man, did you think I wouldn't see? You were like a dog. It was pathetic."

"Good God, Holmes! Just because you function like an automaton - "

"There's a difference between an _automaton_ and being capable of self-control."

"I am! Good Lord, Holmes, I am, much more capable than even you realise. And I was not that bad, and you know it. Why, if I didn't know better - "

"You rarely do."

My teeth now seemed as though they would be worn away by the end of our discussion, so tightly was I grinding them together. "If I didn't know better, Holmes, I'd say you were jealous."

He sneered at that. "What a ludicrous notion," he spat, "I shall see you in the morning when you shall, I _hope_ , be less preposterous." And he stood up from his seat by the fire, and stormed out of the room.

"Good night, Holmes," I said to the slamming door. I do not suppose he heard me.

***

Later that evening, when the fire had almost died down, there was a quiet knock at my door.

"Come in," I thought it must be Holmes, come to apologise for his earlier behaviour, "look, Holmes, I'm sorry too - oh!"

It was not, as I had thought, my friend, but rather one of the servants. She, like her mistress, was exceptionally pretty, although in a very different way; she looked to be from India, though exactly where I could not say. Her thick dark hair was held perilously behind her head, and her eyes, though rather unnerving in their intensity, were a deep brown and framed with lashes just shy of being too long. She was little, and thin, but there was in her stance something that hinted at a compacted strength which it would be wise not to test. I smiled at her and apologised for my mistake.

"It is no matter, Dr. Watson. I am the Lady Theresa's lady's maid, and she wanted me to tell you and Mr. Holmes that breakfast is at nine o'clock. She says that she forgot earlier."

"Thank you, we'll be sure to be down in time..." my sentence hung, unfinished, as I was unaware of her name.

"My name is Anjali. Anjali Goswami."

"Goswami - I knew a man called that in India. Are you from the Assam region?"

She looked surprised at that, if faintly. "Yes, sir. My father worked for the Lady Theresa's family when they were living there."

"I didn't know she was ever in India."

"Oh yes," Anjali nodded, "her father was very nearly Chief Commissioner of Assam, before they had to return to England for his ill health. I have worked for the family all my life. The Lady Theresa brought me back with her, since my parents were dead by then."

"I am sorry to hear that. You must be a very great friend of your mistress. I take it you're the same age?"

"Almost to the day, sir. And, yes; I am. And I would be very happy to assist you and Mr. Holmes in your investigation. There are things I know which might interest you both."

My smile became quiet earnest now. "Thank you, Anjali. I'm sure you'll be very useful to Holmes indeed."

She did not reply, instead curtseying and taking her leave of me. I was alone. Somewhere in the dark woodland beyond the house, the vixen started up her screaming again.


	3. In Which There Is A Brief Interlude

The following, though it took place on the night Holmes and I arrived at Bramshill, was not reported to me until the next January. It came in the form of some five pages of annotated notes, introduced by the words: " _For you, good doctor, to use if ever you wish to publish our story. বিদায় , A. G._ " Naturally some details have been invented by my own imagination, and some have been ommitted, but the majority is reproduced as faithfully as possible here, in case anyone ever chooses to read my scribblings after I am gone.

 

***

When she left my room, Anjali walked the dark and silent corridors up to her mistress's chamber once again. There the lady sat at her dressing table, hair undone, gloves lying forgotten on a chair. She sighed and rested her head on her arms.

"My lady?"

There was a muffled little noise, and she lifted up her head. "Anjali, we're alone. You don't need to keep that up. Did you tell them?"

She walked across the room to stand behind her mistress. "I did. Nine o'clock," she began to run her hands through her mistress's thick red hair, but stopped and caught her eye in the mirror of the dressing table, "my lady - Tess - why have you brought them here? I don't understand."

She seemed confused by the question, almost angry. "I have to know what happened to my husband, Anjali. I need to know who killed him."

The maidservant frowned, letting her gaze fall. "I thought you knew."

"No, I don't know, and it's killing me."

"So was he!" Anjali rarely chose to show any great emotion, but her mistress's well being was a subject about which she could not remain calm.

Lady Theresa, however, could not appreciate the sentiment. "He was my husband! If someone killed him then I  _have_ to know. I have to have justice! I  _took a vow,_ Anjali, in church and before God, that I would honour and obey him. I intend to keep it."

"Only until death do you part, which it now has. Why must you go digging up things that will only cause you pain?"

"Don't you understand?" here the lady turned to face her maid, "I wronged him enough in our marriage. I can't let him die without bringing the culprit to justice. I can't. He deserves better than that."

"He deserved exactly what he got." And with that Anjali began to stride towards the door, no longer prepared to engage in the discussion.

Ladies' fashions at the time did not permit ease of movement, and it looks set to remain so. In consequence, catching up to Anjali before she left was no easy matter for Lady Theresa, who had to navigate her way between the dressing table and the stool in several layers of skirts and an oversized bustle. She almost tripped and fell as she hurried across the room, but did manage to catch her servant's wrist before she had made it to the door.

"Please, Anjali, don't go. Don't leave me, please."

By now they were pressed against the wall. Lady Theresa had her hands on the other woman's hips, Anjali's hands twisted in the weight of her red hair. They kissed.

It would be wrong of me to describe or even imagine what transpired between the two late that evening. A private diary this may be, but I have no desire to record the intimate lives of others within it, nor would the ladies in question wish me to do so. Rather, we must jump to the small hours of the following morning, when both were still in bed.

Anjali had awoken first, with her mistress's head burrowed into her shoulder. Extricating herself from the other lady's limbs would prove a difficult task, but it was imperative that she return to her own room at the top of the house before the rest of the staff rose to begin the day. The sliver of sky visible through a crack in the curtains was dark, and would remain so for some hours yet. The whole house was silent, heavy with sleep and waiting. The night was cold, even for an English October, and it was on such nights that Anjali missed her native India the most. It had been difficult for them both to leave when the time came, though Anjali had been offered another position in the Chief Commissioner's household and could have stayed. By then, however, her parents were dead and the de Laneys - as her mistress had been - were the only family she had left. She found, however much she missed her homeland and however painful their lives had become, she did not regret her decision to remain with her mistress.

If ever this diary is found, then I hope it is by someone with a sympathetic heart, for I do not hesitate to say that Anjali loved her mistress, not as a faithful servant loves their master or even as one sister loves another, but as a man should love his wife. Whether or not society would object to their relationship on the grounds of sex, race or class the most is debatable, although it would not be difficult to guess. Some faint knowledge of the relationship may have hastened Theresa's marriage, but they were never really found out. There were as happy as any man and wife and to see them confined to the realms of secrecy and shadows was painful.

So Anjali's objection to Holmes's presence was hardly surprising; she merely wished to protect the woman she loved from the truth. For the truth, as tended to happen when Holmes was involved, will out, and it would be difficult for anyone to stomach it when it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The internet informs me that "বিদায় " is Assamese for "goodbye". This may, of course, be nonsense, so if anyone knows better please tell me so. I'd hate to offend anyone.


	4. In Which A Murder Is Investigated

By breakfast the next morning, I had been forgiven; Holmes had apparently recovered from the previous night's fit of pique. Lady Theresa seemed far more willing to engage us in conversation than she had been. Her mother-in-law did not take breakfast until later in the day, it seemed, and even then only in her rooms, and so the three of us were alone. Over breakfast, Lady Theresa outlined briefly for us the facts of the case as they had been presented to the police: her husband, walking alone along the cliff top had fallen, or perhaps jumped, over the edge to the rocks below. This had been witnessed by her own maidservant Anjali, who, although she was too far away to help him directly, ran back to the manor house and informed the household of the incident. The police came as fast as they could, and a search was conducted for several days, but the body was never recovered. After this explantion, we ate largely in silence, with Holmes apparently the only one unaffected by the details.

The weather was foul, the wind was battering the walls of the house so hard it seemed we might be blown away. Holmes resolved to inspect the house rather than venture out onto the cliff where Lord Montmerency had met his end, meaning that it would be a simple matter for me to accompany him in all his investigation that day; I feared that when the time to walk up to the cliff top came, my leg might not be in a fit state for me to be of much use to my friend. For the moment I had no need to worry; climbing the stairs, as numerous as they were, was no great strain on my leg and I had little trouble following Holmes from room to room as he made his deductions. We began in the lord's own chambers, as there was little left for Holmes to glean from the rest of the house. Certainly the rooms were opulently furnished in the latest style, but I could see little else of interest. That he had been a keen hunter was obvious; the antlers and stuffed heads of stags lined the walls, and a large brown bear pelt covered a large part of the floor.

"I wonder where he got this," I said, indicating the rug.

"A trip to America, perhaps? Or Russia? I am sure the Lady Theresa would be able to inform us." Clearly it was of next to no importance to Holmes, who was far more concerned with inspecting the remainder of the lord's tobacco and rifling through his writing desk.

"There is one thing I do not yet understand," Holmes said as he picked the lock of the desk, "you would agree, would you not, Watson, that what we have seen of the house so far shows no sign of neglect or disrepair?"

I was rather surprised. "Indeed I have not. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Precisely. And yet the lord still decided to rent out the dowager's cottage on the estate rather than install his mother into it. Does that not strike you as odd?"

I frowned. "Why, yes, now that you mention it. Certainly they can't be in need of the money. Or, they do a remarkable job of covering it up if they are."

"Indeed. And in such cases, the household staff will be the first to take a hit. Not the long-serving staff, of course, but daily maids and under-gardeners and the like. I have not noticed a deficiency of either."

"Well, if you have not then I certainly haven't." He smiled at me when I said that, and not the superior smile of the Genius Consulting Detective he sometimes offered.

"You do yourself a disservice, Watson. People are your forte, after all, not mine."

Before I could think of a suitable reply to such a glowing compliment from my habitually misanthropic friend, he had sprung the lock of the writing desk with a satisfied cry, and began to search through its contents. In amongst the bills, invitations to parties long since thrown, and personal correspondence of no great importance Holmes did seem to find one or two things which caught his interest.

"What do you make of these, Watson?"

I went over to him, pocketing my notebook, and took the sheets of paper he handed me. One was a misspelt telegram announcing the death of someone's brother-in-law, the other was a letter requesting lodgings on the estate, equally full of errors. The letter looked to be in the hand of a child, with each letter undertaken separately and laboriously inscribed. I guessed, however, that it was the writing of an adult from the language.

"A woman's hand?"

Holmes nodded. "Indeed. Poorly educated, working class, her right hand is not her strongest; favouring the left will have been beaten out of her at a charity school, or something similar, no doubt. The lines are uneven, but the letters, though difficult, are neat. So the letter as a whole should be, but the light where she wrote it was poor, and so she could not see it properly. It is likely, then, that she has some form of employment, otherwise she would have waited until there was enough natural light to write it during the day. Either that, or she lives in a tenement in a city, where there would not be enough natural light to see the paper by at any time of day. Quite possibly both. And yet, this young, undereducated woman presumes to write to a peer of the realm requesting a living on his estate. Now, why on earth would she do that?"

I sighed. "Well, either she hoped for employment within the household, or she had some hold on him."

"An illegitimate child, perhaps?"

"Quite possibly. And in that case, if the living were refused, or the lord slighted her in some other way..."

"...We have a suspect for his murder. I did fear this case may be more complex than we'd anticipated, Watson. Come along!" He stuffed the letter into the breast pocket of his jacket as he ran out through the door. I followed, walking, still conscious of the pain in my leg, to where he stood at the top of the stairs. He was waiting for me.

 

***

Holmes, whom I never quite taught to be conscious of the finer feelings of others, strolled into the front parlour where Lady Theresa sat reading by the bay window. He had not knocked, and the lady was quite understandably startled.

"My lady," he said, with a bow.

"Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson! Is something the matter? Have you found anything?"

"Not at all," he assured her, lying through his teeth, "however, I should like to conduct some interviews with the household staff, if at all possible. I shall need a quiet room where we cannot be overheard, and to have them sent up one by one to me. Will that be possible?"

"Oh, yes, yes of course. I'll call one of the servants now." She stood and pulled the rope to call someone up to assist us. It was not long before one of the daily maids arrived, quaking a little in the presence of Holmes, who had drawn himself up to his full height and was staring her down, hawk-like. Why he had chosen to terrify the poor girl I had no idea.

"Annie," Lady Theresa's voice was sharp, "these gentlemen need to interview the staff. Take them up to my little drawing room and send the servants up one at a time. And you are  _all_ under strict instructions not to go near the rooms until the interviews have finished, is that clear?"

"Yes, m'lady." She curtsied, still fearful of Holmes, and showed us up to the room we had been allotted as quickly as possible. I wondered at Lady Theresa's behaviour.

The room to which we were led was small, but comfortably furnished and with a view over the western reaches of the estate down to the little hamlet of Bramshill. Holmes fell into an armchair by the fireplace before gesturing for the serving girl to stay where she was.

"We may as well begin our interview with you, Miss Annie."

Her eyes grew huge, "Oh, I didn't see nothing Mr. Holmes. I'm only a daily, I weren't there the night he died. I'd gone back home long since."

"As no doubt had many others. However, you can still be of some use to us, I hope. First of all - Watson, I take it you have your notebook? - how long have you been working here at the manor house?"

"Less than two years, sir."

"And in that time did you ever see or hear anything to suggest that your master had any enemies? Anyone who might want to do away with him?"

"Well, he weren't always popular, but I don't think there's anyone who'd have wanted him dead."

"And yet, so he is. What was the reason for his unpopularity, I wonder?"

"Well - he was a bit blunt. Sharp, like. Rude, sometimes, too. And he had an awful temper. It weren't too bad so long as you did as he said, mind. I never had too much trouble with him."

"And his wife? What is your opinion of her?"

Here Annie stiffened, and drew herself to her full, though unimpressive, height. "Since we're in confidence, sir: I say she's no better than she should be, and a fair bit worse than some."

"You do not like her, then?" Holmes's face remained impassive, indifferent. I wondered what he might be thinking.

"No, sir, I don't. She was never much good to Lord Montmerency. Cold, like. Stiff. Not how a wife ought to be with her husband, I thought. There was plenty of us thought he might have found someone more suited."

Holmes nodded, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. "Was Lord Montmerency an attractive man?"

Annie blushed. I frowned at Holmes's line of questioning, but said nothing. No doubt it had a purpose. "Well, sir, now, I don't think -"

Holmes's expression brooked no argument, and Annie was forced to capitulate. "I wouldn't say he was bad looking. And there's rumours he was a bit of a ladykiller in his day. Personally, I have no opinion."

"Of course you don't. And you say you weren't here on the night of his death?"

"No, sir. I was at home with my mother, in bed. The little grey house at the end of the side road in Bramshill. There's nine other people could tell you as much."

"Do not worry about that, my dear, I have no reason to disbelieve you. You are dismissed. Send someone else up after you."

The questioning continued in this vein for several hours more, until we had spoken to every member of the household staff. There was much of interest to be discovered - the under-gardener's fling with the cook's assistant, and the butler's dead uncle; the footman's desertion of the army, and the housekeeper's ailing, ancient mother-in-law - but none of it bore any obvious relation to the case. By the end Holmes was sprawled across the armchair, smoking his fifth cigarette. We now had only one more servant to question. I failed to stifle a yawn.

"You may go if you're getting tired, Watson. I am sure I could make the notes myself."

I shook my head. "It's for myself as much as you, Holmes. I shall need them if I ever write the case up."

He smirked at that.

The final servant we interviewed was Anjali, who stood before us both with her chin thrust up, almost defiant. I could think of no reason for her manner, unless she felt it an insult to her integrity that we were questioning her; some of the staff had seemed affronted that we should, however indirectly or unconsciously, imply that they had not been entirely honest when questioned by the police. Somehow this seemed unlikely in a woman as apparently sensible and level-headed as Anjali had been.

"Anjali Goswami, Lady Theresa's lady's maid. How nice to see you again," Holmes's smile was tight-lipped and insincere.

She bowed her head, and nothing more. "Mr. Holmes,"

"Some preliminary questions about your background to begin with, and then - "

She threw back her head once more, as if about to recite a speech. "I was born in the Assam region of India, in the household of Lady Theresa Montmerency's father, who was working for the Chief Commissioner there. He almost assumed the position himself, but was suffering from ill-health and so instead returned to England. As both of my parents were by then dead - my mother in childbirth, my father from cholera - I came with the family as a personal servant to Lady Theresa. When she married, I came with her here, to Bramshill. We are exactly the same age, Mr. Holmes. We were born a week apart. I have known her all my life."

"More friends than mistress and servant, then?"

She smiled at that. "You could say that. Certainly, I would gladly give my life for her, without a second thought."

Holmes ignored this outburst of sentiment. "Where were you on the night in question?"

"I was on the cliff top. I saw what happened. The police went on my evidence, surprisingly. They had no more. Not even a body."

"Washed away, yes. So, the story fits. Describe it to me."

"The night was dark, and cold, and finding myself unable to sleep I instead decided to go for a walk along the cliff. I had done it many times before, and I knew the lay of the land well. While there, I saw a man standing on the edge of the cliff. I could not make out who it was. I called out to him, but he did not hear me, as the wind blew my words back behind me. Before I could stop him, he seemed to stumble and topple over the edge. I ran back to the house at once and raised the alarm."

"Indeed. And you were the only witness?"

"Yes. I saw no one else on the cliff top."

"And can you think of any reason why someone might have wanted to kill him?"

"No."

"Can anyone confirm your version of the facts?"

"I have no alibi, sir, no. However, given that I immediately informed the entire household, and the police, and in light of my lady's defence of my character and trustworthiness, and my own strength compared to that of my late master, the police did not think there were reasonable grounds for my arrest. It was fairly clear to them that I am not guilty of any crime that might have been committed."

"Indeed. You may go, Goswami."

She nodded once again, and walked through the door without a backwards glance.


	5. In Which Our Heroes Discuss the Case, and Our Heroines Discuss Our Heroes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a massive thank you everyone that left kudos/bookmarked this, or even just read it. You're all wonderful.

"A little standoffish, wasn't she, Watson?"

I had settled into the chair closest to his, and was scanning the notes I had made during our interviews with the staff. I glanced at him. "I could easily say the same about you, Holmes. You both seemed rather tense."

He swung his legs about to settle his feet on the floor rather than the arm of the chair. "I find I do not like Goswami, Watson. Not a bit."

"Whyever not? She seemed perfectly nice."

Holmes frowned, angry - at whom, I could not tell. "I cannot understand her. I can get no impression of her. Nothing beyond what I knew anyway. It...is not a pleasant sensation."

I scoffed. "Oh, Holmes, are you really taking a dislike to the girl because she makes you feel like an ordinary man?" He could, for all his genius, sometimes beahve in the most petulant and childish manner. All he did was scowl at me.

"We must interview the ladies of the house." He stood, and left me to stare after him as he disappeared through the door. I tried not to laugh. When I had recovered my equilibrium, I went after him, finding him in the front parlour with Lady Theresa once more. They appeared to be arguing when I arrived. Lady Theresa stood, arms rigid by her side and face rather manic, staring at Holmes, who sat with his back to the great window.

"But I have already told you everything I know!"

"Lady Theresa, please, it would be of great use to me - "

"I told you to investigate my husband's death. I've given you everything I know about it. What more use can I be?"

"It is important for me to understand the circumstances of your marriage, my lady."

"Mr. Holmes, his killer may be out there now, and there is no more I can do for you. Please, do not waste your time on me!" She was not angry, but severely distressed and looked to be on the verge of tears.

I hurried to her side in order to help her onto the chaise. She began to sob. Producing a handkerchief from my breast pocket, I attempted to console her, to little effect. She did, however, grab my shoulder with one thin white hand and begin to soak the shoulder of my jacket with her tears. I must confess, I had not the heart to care, given her state at the time. Holmes, on the other hand, seemed to object quite strenuously. I motioned that he should remain silent until the lady had recovered. In response, he began to sulk. I had a sudden, passing thought of my mother, with one son crying in her lap and another stewing in the corner for want of attention, planning some mischief. I resolved to lay a posy of flowers at her grave at my earliest convenience.

I heard something like a hiccup, and looked down at Lady Theresa, who was no longer crying, and had released my shoulder. "Dr. Watson," she said, "I am so sorry! I should not have had such an outburst. I do apologise."

I shook my head at her as I took her arm from my shoulder. "Not at all, my lady. I understand - when someone you love has gone, it can be extremely difficult. But you must be strong - our suffering and loss means as much as our happiness and love, and though they define us, they need not defeat us." This was a philosophy which I had to come to understand all too well during my service with the army, and I hoped to pass it on to someone to whom it could be of some use. Certainly Lady Theresa seemed to take heart, for she straightened her spine and blinked back the last of her tears.

"I am sorry, Dr. Watson, Mr. Holmes - I have not coped well with the end of my marriage. But please, if you must question me then do so. I was being foolish, hysterical. Please forgive me."

For all her apologies, Holmes and I learnt little from Lady Theresa that afternoon. She admitted that the marriage had not been a love match, although I do not think that surprised either of us; by then, even I had noticed the strange patterning of injuries about her chest and arms. Her sense of duty was strong, that much was obvious. What she lacked in love for her husband was substituted with respect for the sacred vows of marriage and wifely loyalty. Holmes seemed to scoff at both, and for once I was not shocked at his unorthodox opinions. However, we could not discern much more than this. Lady Theresa gave away little, and admitted less. We thanked her for her time before making our way out of the parlour. I kept to myself the thought that Holmes might have learnt more had he been less brusque with her.

"Be as appalled at my rudeness as you like, Watson - there's little I care to do about it." The man was a mind reader, and one who rarely used the power for more than making mischief. I scowled at him, but strangely he seemed not to notice that.

Our next task was to speak with the eldest Lady Montmerency, the late lord's mother. She was sat in her rooms at the top of the house, staring out over the grounds. She did not reply to our knocking for several moments. We waited, with Holmes growing more impatient by the second.

"Come in," she called at last, faintly, as if from underwater. The door stuck, and the room was in shadow when we entered.

"You're that detective fellow," she said, watery eyes fixed on us, "and his friend. What do you want with me?"

"I was hoping to speak to you about your son, my lady." Holmes told her, at once becoming polite and deferential. He was an impossible man.

"My son?"

"Yes, my lady. I want to ask you what sort of a man he was, for the sake of the case."

Her eyes grew bright. "Oh! Well, he was a sweetheart. As a child he was always so good and charming. Everyone who saw him as a boy thought so. And all the time he was growing up, everyone would say how handsome and manly he was getting, and how proud he'd make us all, and what a credit to the family he was. And so he should have been, too. But I never did like that girl he married, you know. I always thought he could do better. She was dreadfully poor, barely had a dowry. And raised in India, too - not healthy, not for an English child, no no. I don't trust her, nor that maid of hers. I never did. And oh, now, my poor boy! My poor, poor boy!"

She continued in this vein for another twenty minutes or more, and though I did what I could to comfort her, we left her in rather a state, with Holmes poorly concealing his distaste. According to his mother, Lord Montmerency had been a pinnacle of English manhood sadly brought down by his wife, although still a fine man, and his death had been a terrible shock. She would admit to no streak of immorality or sin in her darling child; he liked a drink, but what man did not? He may have had his way with women, but what woman could resist him? He was not always kind to his wife, but who could have treated such a woman differently?

It was clear that the lord had been indulged in his childhood, and dissolute in his youth. What sort of a husband he had become was growing clear. The marriage to Lady Theresa was arranged by their fathers, who had both died shortly after the wedding. There was no mystery there; one had been suffering from cancer, the other from cirrhosis of the liver after nearly sixty years of dedicated daily alcohol consumption. They had, however, been friends in their youth. This did, at least, explain the marriage, for Lady Montmerency had been right; her son could easily have made a better match.

By now it was growing dark, and we passed our second evening in the house much as we had spent the first. We dined with the two ladies, before a brief conversation in the front parlour before we all made our separate ways to bed. Once again, Holmes planted himself on my mattress and began to discuss the case with me as I pottered about before bed.

He had not yet formed many theories. The mysterious woman in the woods was still to be interviewed, and he did not wish to speculate too much before he had spoken to her. The servants had, he said, been singularly useless, although he had thought there was something about the Indian maid.

"Did she not seem suspicious to you, Watson?"

I shrugged. "Not particularly. Rather proud, perhaps, but not overly so. Certainly she was charming enough when she spoke to me last night."

"But not to me. What does that say to you?"

I thought for a moment. "That she does not trust the detective in her house, but she does trust the doctor?"

"So. She has something to hide, and something in need of medical attention, perhaps. I wonder." Here he fell into silent speculation, plotting out what facts he had inside his head, and I could not reach him. I left him to think, sorting through the notes I had made that day until he took his leave of me.


	6. In Which Legs Become A Problem

The next day Holmes fell off a cliff.

He did not fall very far, landing safe on a ledge not far from the cliff top, but I was understandably frightened when he told of the incident after his return later that morning. He had spent the day exploring the cliffs where Anjali claimed she had seen Lord Montmerency fall to his death, and told me all as we sat together in the back parlour.

He had set out early in the morning, before the rest of the household had awoken. The weather, foul though it had been earlier in the week, had calmed and cooled. The cold air bit at his face as he walked down from the house, but it did not rain and there was little wind. The sky was flat and grey, the sea rattled at the rocks of the cliff without much fury. It had been known to break over the cliff top, but there was no danger of that on the day Holmes set out to explore the site where Lord Montmerency had met his end.

He later told me that he stood for some time on the cliff edge looking out over the water, or down at the black rocks below which jutted out from the green and briny sea. Certainly it was possible for a man to be lost entirely on those rocks; if he were to fall into the sea beneath them, it would be impossible for his body to be recovered by boat, and if the weather were bad - as it had been on the days following the lord's death - there would be no hope of searching for the corpse to begin with. The geography of the coastline at least gave Holmes no reason to doubt the Indian maid's account.

Holmes was entirely alone that morning, although he could see fishermen in the cove some miles away preparing to go out in their boats, hazy little smudges moving about below him near the water. He smoked a cigarette as he walked, inspecting the ground for any little knolls or depressions which might easily send a man over the edge. He concluded that, on a dark night, it would be easy to misjudge one's footing and topple into the sea. What he could not deduce was why the dead man had chosen to go for a walk along the cliff at all.

As he pondered this, as if to prove how treacherous the land could be, he twisted his ankle on a protruding stump of grass and felt himself begin to slip over the cliff edge. He tried to grasp at the lip of it, but the ground crumbled in his hands and the wet grass would not allow him to get a firm grip. He began to fall.

He did not have far to go, however, for less than seven feet below the place where he had slipped there was a flat rock face which jutted out from the cliff, about two feet wide and five feet across; small enough that one could easily fall past it, but large enough and sturdy enough for a man of Holmes's size to land comfortably and hoist himself back onto more substantial ground without difficulty. Rather than immediately clambering back onto the cliff top, however, my friend took the opportunity to peer again at the rocks and the composition of the cliff to gain a better understanding of the fate Lord Montmerency might have met that night now more than a week ago.

He did, however, damage his ankle and so getting off the ledge was a trial for him. He came to me early that morning just as our hostess wondered where he might have gone, and told me all as I treated his swollen foot.  He sat on a couch in the back parlour, his foot resting in my lap as I prodded it gently to check for broken bones. The windows of the room were south-facing and what little wintry sunlight there was streamed through the high panes of glass to fall on my friend's face. I did not think then how I must have looked, though in retrospect, with all the light arraying itself about my head, I might have been rather angelic, for perhaps the first and last time in my life. Holmes himself, who was at the time my only concern, seemed ten years younger in the soft gold light. His prominent cheekbones cast shadows on the hollows of his wasted cheeks and his eyelashes sent out thin little black lines to meet them. He was rather beautiful.

The thought did not distract me; it merely meandered across my mind as I returned to my doctorly prodding, at which Holmes began to complain quite forcefully. I told him to sit still. I only needed to know whether and where his ankle hurt him. After much childish sulking and pouting on his part, and further objections that his foot might well fall off before a diagnosis could be made, the way I was manhandling it, I declared that it was badly sprained, but not broken. I advised that rest it for a while, and not to walk on it. Before he could protest about the case, I went up to my room to fetch my cane for him. It was not quite high enough for Holmes, much the taller of the two of us, but it would do for a time until we could find a suitable replacement. A rather grudging 'thank you' was all the gratitude I got.

I did ask, as he hobbled towards the door against my instructions, what he made of the cliff top. He paused, and shuffled around to face me once more.

"I do not know," I saw one hand tapping, restless, on the top of the cane, "certainly it was a place a body could be lost. And we have first-hand evidence that it is a dangerous place," he gestured wryly to his injured foot, "and yet I still cannot help wondering why a man would want to walk there in the middle of the night, without a light of any sort. It does not make sense - there is nothing to see there, and it is not a place one might meet another in secret; there is no secluded spot in which to hide. I had thought, you see, that perhaps he had been lured there on some pretext by another. But I should say now that he was not. It is all very odd, Watson. Very odd indeed."

With that he begun to limp away through the door and out of my sight. All the same, he was happy to tell our hostess that evening, over lightly grilled lemon sole, that the case was progressing. It would be much easier, he told her, now that certain lines of investigation had been eliminated. The dead man's mother was pleased at the news, and Lady Montmerency met it with something like relief, but I thought I saw a shadow pass over the face of Anjali, who was serving us in place of a footman taken ill. I hoped that I had not misplaced my trust in her.


	7. In Which There Are Children

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very sorry, but this chapter took SO LONG to write. Still, here it is, at last - chapter seven! TW for past mentions of rape apply.

Now that Holmes was invalided, the task of interviewing the cottagers fell to me, for once the more mobile of the two of us. Though lurching about the house and gardens was not too much of a strain, especially since the discovery of an old pair of crutches in the Montmerencys' attic, walking all the way up the wooded hill to the cottage would be beyond him. And so, after much grumbling on his part, he gave me a list of questions and sent me on my way up the hill late one morning. The weather was fine that day, if cold, and my battle scars did not protest too much at the exercise. I had grown so used to the thick smogs of London that the bright, fresh sea air of the Norfolk coast came to me as something akin to an epiphany; thus was man intended to live.

The going was difficult, for the ground was uneven and the gradient harsh in places. However, the bare branches of the trees formed arches above my head to throw patches of sunlight at my feet, as robins fluttered about between them, and I could not feel anything but peace. I heard my laboured breaths mingling with the breeze in the branches, my footsteps echoed by unseen creatures in the fallen leaves below me. The ground was a carpet of brown and red and gold, with green columns of mossy tree trunks bursting from it at irregular intervals. There are, or so I have heard, faiths which hold that the souls of the dead reside in trees. I wondered what sort of souls were captured here, transmuted into trees in a such a place as this. Good souls; souls of the pure and the brave and the kind. Since the deaths of my dearest friend and my beloved wife, I have often thought that perhaps their souls are there, solidified into trees, for they were the bravest and the kindest people I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

At the time my thoughts were not so heavy. Burdened though I was with a serious purpose, I was not indifferent to the beauty of the place. On my long walk up to the cottage I marvelled at the brightness of the light, the clarity of my vision. I sighed, found myself humming, I was so entirely content. What would Holmes make of me, I wondered, strolling along so casually to investigate a murder? No doubt he would scoff at my romanticism.

The cottage itself stood far back in the wood, a way off the path and beyond a little stream. The stepping stones placed along the width of the latter were the only way to the cottage from the direction in which I had come. I hopped with, it must be said, little grace across the water. Here the light was dimmer, blocked more densely by the thick intertwining leaves of the trees. We had been advised against announcing our intention to visit the cottagers, and so I was not expected when I knocked on the little wooden front door, which was too low even for me to pass through without ducking.

It was some time before my knock was answered. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a movement behind the glass of the solitary window pane, but there was no one there when I looked more closely. There was a little rhombus of a window set into the door itself, although it was so dim within the cottage that I could barely see into it. I heard some commotion within, the sound of voices raised without their owners' permission. I wondered at my presence causing such a furore.

At last the door was opened, if only a few inches, by a short middle-aged woman with dark hair and eyes who peered up at me and did not trust me. I smiled as warmly as I could and introduced myself as Dr. John Watson, here to speak to the young lady of the house.

This woman, whom I presumed to be the girl's mother, sniffed at me. "And what do you want with her, may I ask?"

"I wish to speak with her about the master of this estate. I believe they were once acquainted."

"And what business is that of yours, I should like to know?"

"His widow, Lady Montmerency, has called my friend Sherlock Holmes down to investigate what she believes to be the murder of her husband. I am Mr. Holmes's companion. Since his Lordship was once acquainted with your daughter, I should like to speak with her. It will not be for long."

"She's not in."

A cry came from the back of the cottage. "Who is it, mother?"

I raised an eyebrow and tried to step through the door. The mother barred my way. "She won't see you."

"She must, I'm afraid. Either that, or I will have to bring the police here with me." It was an empty threat, in truth, but the poor woman had no way of knowing that and her eyes widened.

"Don't sir, please. She hasn't - we're not criminals, sir. We're not."

"Well that remains to be seen, Mrs..."

"Hall."

"Mrs. Hall. Now, if I could please speak with your daughter?"

At that another call came from the back room of the cottage, a sharper demand to know who their visitor was. Mrs. Hall allowed me in under sufferance and kept her little dark eyes on me all the while. Even as she led me to the room where her daughter sat, her small head would dart around every now and again to catch a glimpse of me. To this day, I am not sure that I have ever met a more protective mother. She stood by the door as I introduced myself to Miss Hall, who seemed to be a perfect copy of her mother, albeit twenty-five years younger. She was exceptionally pretty, with fair skin and a head of dark curls pulled back behind her head. There was a child of no more than two bouncing on her lap. I thought of the date on the letter Holmes had found in Lord Montmerency's office; it had been written in the August of the previous year.

Miss Hall saw me looking at her little boy and smiled. "This is my Georgie," she said, looking down into his face to kiss him on the nose, "ent he sweet?"

I smiled at her. "Yes, very much so. And, you, Miss? What is your name, may I ask?"

"Evangeline Hall," her smile, when she directed at one, was rather brilliant, "hello, doctor. And are you going to say hello too, my Georgie?" The child merely gurgled at me merrily before once again occupying himself with his previous task of pulling at the patches on his mother's skirt. I thought of the poorly written letter, and remembered the initials 'E.H' scratched haphazardly at the bottom.

Of course I already knew the answer, but nevertheless I asked her, "And, is the boy's father here, Miss?"

Her pretty face clouded over at that and she shook her head. "No, sir. No, he's - he's not got a father."

"I am sorry to hear that. May I ask how he died?"

Her brow furrowed at that. "You may ask, but I shan't answer you, sir. His father weren't such a good man." The mention of the father had upset her, and I immediately regretted it. Evangeline had the ability to endear one to her straight away. I will admit that I was not immune to her charms. No doubt Lord Montmerency had experienced something similar; I shudder to think of Miss Hall now, knowing that she might well have fallen once again into the power of another man such as him.

"I am sorry," I said to her then, "forgive me, Miss. However, I do think I know how he died already. I suppose asking was rather disingenuous of me. I am right, am I not, in thinking that this little boy's father was Lord Montmerency?"

Evangeline's eyes began to well up with tears. I cursed myself to heaven. Her mother stepped in then, no longer able to bear my questioning. "That's enough, now, doctor. She don't need accusations like that thrown at her, not with her - " she swallowed the word, "she don't need it. You leave my daughter alone, now, sir."

"Please, Mrs. Hall, it is of vital importance that I speak with your daughter on this matter. I promise, I am not here to judge, not in the slightest. I merely need to ascertain from your daughter the nature and extent of her relationship with his late Lordship. Once I have that information, I shall leave you both. I promise." It had become, quite suddenly, vitally important that I remain with Evangeline and her baby until I could be sure that both would be all right. When I related the case to Mary, albeit not in its entirety, she attributed it to my desire to help others. Still I wonder precisely why they left such an impression upon my mind.

"Please doctor," she said to me, "you mustn't hate me for it. I didn't know. I didn't know it would - I didn't know." She had begun to cry, and I offered her my handkerchief.

"There now, Miss Hall, you mustn't weep. I am not here to lay censure on you; in fact I do not blame you in the slightest. All I want is for you to tell me about what happened between you and Lord Montmerency, as plainly as you can."

And then, at last, she did. It was not a pleasant story to hear or to tell. There were several points when Evangeline found herself overcome, and paused to choke on a rather pitiful sob. It took her several hours; by the time she had finished, it was growing dark. Though I have heard many such stories in my life, in my various capacities as a doctor, a detective's assistant and a friend, they have never ceased to repulse me. There are a great number of men, now, whom I would very much like to have the honour of throttling.

Evangeline's family had worked on the estate for several generations by the time she was born. When Lord Montmerency came down from London after the death of his father, however, he announced his decision to overhaul the domestic staff entirely. In the midst of the suspicion and fear which naturally follows such an announcement, Evangeline was sent to plead her family's case up at the house. She seemed to have been successful; Lord Montmerency allowed them to stay in the little house their family had occupied for over sixty years, and all kept their jobs. He even offered Evangeline a position as a scullery maid in the house itself. The family were overjoyed.

For three years, they had no indication of what Lord Montmerency had been doing to Evangeline. She was young when she took the job at the house, barely nineteen, and she had always been a rather simple girl. Though it was assumed that she would one day marry, her mother had not thought to warn her then of the things men can do. When she arrived at the house, as she put it, she was no more educated than a child. Indeed, it was a long time before she could do so much as put a name to what she had suffered. For all the other maids gossiped and the under-gardeners would make remarks whenever she passed them, for all people _talked_ , nobody ever thought to talk to Evangeline.

She had learnt the word by the time I met her. He had raped her many times in the first three years she had been in his service. Usually, she said, it was in the quiet hours between lunch and supper when there is little for anyone to do, and everyone is out of the way. When, at last, she learnt what was happening, she wondered why she had not fallen pregnant.

"They say that her Ladyship lost two babies, but I'm not so sure it's true. I think maybe his Lordship might have had a problem. And - and, well, there's rumours about that son of theirs. You hear all sorts. 'Course, his Lordship weren't incapable - I've my Georgie to show for that, haven't I? - but I don't think he were normal, neither. There's other men would've had a lot more children by me than he did. His wife too. I mean, we both look healthy enough." I agreed that this was true, and wondered whether or not it would be possible to verify these whispered reports of the late lord's possible partial impotency. It would certainly interest Holmes when I returned to him with the news.

One day, of course, Evangeline found that she was pregnant. Her mother was the first person she thought to tell.

"She didn't turn me out though, doctor. She looked after me." I could see the gratitude in her eyes as she spoke. Looking at Mrs. Hall, I could not say that I was surprised; she was a suspicious, secretive woman, but on her daughter's account. It was not for herself that she worried.

Not wanting the others working at the house to know about the child, Evangeline had travelled up to Birmingham to live with her elder sister. Her name was Anna, and she had by that time been married for several years, and had children of her own. No one would notice an addition to the household, and so long as Evangeline found work in the city they would not struggle too desperately for money. Life was difficult for them there, but not impossible. They had managed. Six months after Georgie's birth, however, a bought of tuberculosis had hit the family, killing Evangeline's brother-in-law and all her nieces and nephews. She had written to her old master in desperation, now that she and her sister were unable to pay their landlord, begging him for some employment on the estate.

"I don't know why, sir, but he said - he said I could come live here. In the dowager's cottage."

I looked about the little room in which we sat, clearly intended as a parlour. The place might once have been for the widowed mothers of their Lordships, but nature had been allowed the run of the house too much, and it seemed barely to be holding itself together. No wonder, then, that the late Lord Montmerency had decided to keep his illegitimate child and its impoverished family here, saving himself the trouble of repairing the house for his mother. I wondered what the Lady Montmerency made of the arrangement.

"Did he ever come and see you himself?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "No. He just said we could come live here, and sent old Moore down to fetch us from the station when we arrived. I haven't seen him for years. I heard about his death from mother. She still works as a seamstress for the villagers, she learns everything. Don't you, mother?"

Mrs. Hall nodded, once, face still pinched and guarded.

"I take it you all have alibis for the night of his death?"

At last Mrs. Hall spoke. "Aye. We was all here, me and the girls and Georgie and my husband. No way any of us could've left without waking someone up. Mr. Hall and Anna are both out working now, but if you need to speak to 'em they'll be back this evening."

"Thank you, I'm sure that won't be necessary. You've been a great help, both of you. I wish you the best of luck - and while I am here, if I can lend any medical assistance to any of you, please don't hesitate to ask for it. Thank you, again; if we need to speak with you further, I take it we can always find you here?"

"Aye. There's always someone about the house."

I smiled. "Indeed. Goodbye, Mrs. Hall; Miss. Hall; Georgie. Good day to you all."


	8. In Which Our Heroes Go for a Walk in the Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why haven't I updated in months? Because I am an awful person with no sense of organisation. I am sorry.

While I was interviewing Evangeline Hall in the dowagers' cottage, Holmes moped about the manor house, wandering aimlessly through its many rooms, hoping to encounter some clue he had previously overlooked. He claimed to have found little of any interest, remarking only that Lady Montmerency's room seemed to have been cleaned more thoroughly than any other part of the house; hardly surprising, given her new position as head of the household, even if one allowed for the servants' dislike of her. The rest of the house, in impeccable order despite the trappings of mourning here and there, held nothing to excite the sharp mind of my dear friend.

Although Holmes would remain very dear to me until his death, I never shied away from criticising him when he deserved it, and certainly he deserved it that day; he moped. His sulks were almost as bad as his dreaded black moods, and at least as infuriating. I was glad that I was not the one to have to deal with him that afternoon as he skulked about the house, swinging his way noisily on his crutch.

I had assumed that he would achieve little else during the course of the day, given his relative immobility and the work he had already accomplished in the house. As always, however, Holmes managed to surprise me, although I believe he surprised himself just as much. He related the story of his discovery to me the next day, for I had a story of my own to tell that night with far graver implications. But Holmes would speak over me even so, and so our conversation went that night.

A little after eleven o'clock he found himself wandering the halls with nothing to do, and was suffering from a crippling sense of boredom, as he put it to me.

"It was interminable!" he cried. He had sat himself upon my bed with his legs crossed beneath him, preventing me from relating my news to him by speaking impossibly fast. I would not usually object to hearing such an account of my friend's investigations, but at the time, in light of my own discoveries, it seemed unbearable.

"I am sorry, Holmes, but -"

"Watson, I may never forgive you for these dreadful crutches, however many 'sorry's you offer me," perhaps seeing my look of exasperation and interpreting it quite differently, he attempted to mollify me, "now now, dear boy, I am exaggerating - I'm sure I will get over it eventually. But you see, they made my day so horrifically dull! Or, at least, they would have, had I not had the idea to visit the nursery on the third floor. I was sure, you see, that it was the only part of the house I had not yet seen. And, oh, my dear Watson, what a find I made! It quite explains the presence of that unfortunate girl in the widower's cottage, I can assure you."

"How marvellous, Holmes. But I must insist -"

"Insist upon what? You haven't heard of my discovery yet."

"Nor have you heard of mine."

He scoffed at me, "Well, Watson, unless you dragged a confession out of that poor girl or her mother, I doubt it can be so significant as - "

"I assure you, Holmes, it is. Hugely significant."

At last he relented, though his look made it clear that he only humoured me under sufferance.

I wondered, for a moment, how best to reveal to Holmes what I had found. His impatience at my silence only served to make me more agitated, less able to think of a satisfactory way to begin.  In the end I had to almost shout the words, allowing them all to tumble out of me at once, so unbearable did Holmes's glare become. "I believe I have found a grave."

"How interesting. Now, on to my own - "

His dismissal was almost as painful as his staring had been, though why I felt so disturbed by either eluded me then. "No, Holmes, you don't understand. An unmarked grave, recently filled in." I found I could not voice the suspicions it had been so easy to form when first I came across the site.

Holmes however had no such trouble. He stared at me for a moment, thinking through what I had told him. "So you think it might be that of Lord Montmerency. I see. Well, well, that certainly throws up some interesting questions, if indeed it is. You are certain it must be that of a man?"

"Yes. Of course I didn't - dig it up, but it was about six feet in length. And no more than two or three feet wide. I don't know what other sort of thing might fit those proportions."

"Indeed. Well then it would be most profitable to dig up whatever is inside and examine it for ourselves."

I nodded. "I had thought as much. But I thought I ought to come to you first with the news before taking any particular course of action myself. You will know how to proceed better than I."

Holmes was not listening, and so had I been hoping for any affirmation of my own intuitive powers, my hopes would have been disappointed. My friend had begun lurching doggedly up and down the room, ignoring his limp. I did not bother to reprimand him for it. It would have done no good, just then.

We resolved to investigate the grave ourselves before informing anyone else of my discovery, lest it turn out to be nothing at all. We had to wait another hour or more before we could be certain all the house was abed, and then struggle down to the back door as silently as two invalid men were able, I clutching the point in my thigh where the bullet's entry wound still throbbed on cold nights such as this, Holmes biting back the curses he wished to lay upon his damaged ankle. We seemed to make it down without waking anybody up, however, and at last we made it through the door.

***

The air was cold that night, for the sky was clear, a yellowing gibbous moon staring at the world from her starry sky. The night was not dark, but rather bathed in a strange, insipid light, which reminded one of disease. It was a night to dig up a body.

No doubt Holmes would have mocked my Romanticism; I kept my poetical musings to myself.

I had not wanted Holmes to come along to the grave site with me, but he would insist on joining me for the long walk over the heath and woodland, and when Holmes had an idea in his head it was difficult to shake it off. Despite his injured ankle I resolved to allow him to hobble after me, dissatisfied, but aware that any injuries he might sustain would be less dreadful than if I had left him behind, and he had walked out alone. I almost knew the country by now. He was safe enough with me. Though the night was dark and the ground uneven, we found our way easily enough, with me taking Holmes by the elbow or the waist whenever it was necessary to hoist him over the more impassable sections of the land. Fortunately the grave site, well-secluded though it was, was not so far as the cottage had been. Reaching the grave only took half as long.

It had been well hidden, and had I not chosen to delay my return to the house with a walk through the less travelled-by routes of the wood, I would never have come across it. To tell the truth, I might have missed it even then, but I had dropped my pocket watch when I went to check the time, and in searching for it, I found the grave. Beneath an old and hollow oak tree, half-covered by a mess of dead brown leaves, a mound of earth appeared which, when inspected, proved to be six feet long and three feet wide. Once its shape was seen, it was sadly unmistakable. I led Holmes with great care down the sloping corkscrew path to the spot, while burrs attached themselves to my jacket sleeves and curling red leaves fell upon my hat. The air was thick with the promise of rain moving in over the sea, coming to cloud over the clear sky. The grave was easily found; the oak tree, once known, could not be missed. Evidently this had been the grave-digger's reason for choosing the site, should the body ever need to be found again.

And, indeed, they had found it; for when we reached the grave site, we found we were not at all alone.


End file.
